Critical Linking: May 8th, 2014

Without further ado, we present to you our very definitive list of the 18 most hipster books of all time. These books are so hipster, you probably haven’t even heard of them yet!! But actually, you probably have, and you’ve probably loved them, and they’ve probably even made you weep, and you’ve probably carried them with you on the train so as to seem on-trend.

Jennifer Weiner’s Holy Grail will always be a New York Times review (or two), a laurel she believes is disproportionately dispensed to literary writers and the occasional male genre titan. Salon can’t give her that, but a big part of being taken seriously as a novelist involves having one’s work closely read and reviewed in depth. And that we can do — so here goes.

A New Hampshire resident was handcuffed and led out of a school board meeting on May 5 after he protested the fact that his ninth-grade daughter was assigned the novel “Nineteen Minutes” by Jodi Picoult.

In a striking about-face, the New York Public Library has abandoned its much-disputed renovation plan to turn part of its research flagship on Fifth Avenue at 42nd Street into a circulating library and instead will refurbish the nearby Mid-Manhattan Library, several library trustees said.